


Summer and Winter

by JynErsoinNYC



Category: Black Panther (2018), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Bucky Barnes & Shuri Friendship, Bucky Barnes Recovering, F/M, Humor, Mutual Pining, Post-Black Panther (2018), Pre-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Pre-Relationship, Scientist Shuri (Marvel), Slow Build, Wakanda (Marvel), Yearning, a bunch of one-shots over the years, nothing happens while Shuri is underage, that's my disclaimer for ya'll
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:06:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26413879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JynErsoinNYC/pseuds/JynErsoinNYC
Summary: This is the James Buchanan Barnes Shuri has wanted to know.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Shuri
Comments: 9
Kudos: 21





	1. generosity

“Would you like a new arm?”

It takes Bucky a moment to understand what she is asking, but no time at all to know his answer.

“Can I say no?”

The princess nods. “Of course.”

He’s grateful.

She grins at him. “But I’m still going to design one.”


	2. try as she might

“It’s waterproof.”

Shuri watches Barnes bathe in the shallows of the lake. Her perch on the nearby log bench goes unheeded by her single Dora guard, and she is grateful. The queen mother would not endorse the princess sitting in the dirt, especially when her visits with the American were already met with disapproval. T’Challa had assisted Shuri with that.

He turns to her. His face is patient. “No, thank you, Princess.” 

They’ve done this before, and Shuri never demands any other answer. She has described the arm to him in detail, shown him her drawings and digital constructions, but she’s never asked him again.


	3. lab partners

Bucky thinks he could have survived without King T’Challa’s charity. But he knows he could not have lived without Princess Shuri’s.

If he hadn’t met her, if he’d disappeared again back in Siberia, he might still be alive, but he’d definitely still be a ticking time-bomb.

Their situations have switched, the princess remarks to him now.

They sit on opposite sides of a lab table, watching data roll on the holographic screen between them. Numbers, apparently, relating to the ratio of Vibranium to other materials the princess will need to re-stabilize Wakanda’s outer shield wall. He can’t decipher any of it, but she is taking furious notes.

She states it like a fact: She used to be a secret – just another princess, hidden away from the world. But now they know the truth about her, and they’re craning to get a glimpse. “It’s…not what I imagined.”

For a moment, Bucky wonders if he’s just the nearest pair of ears that will listen to her. _Why would she confess this to him?_ But he can hear she is talking softly, see she is glancing around to make sure none of her scientists are nearby.

“And for you…well…” the princess looks up at him.

Bucky realises what she’s getting at. 

_It’s the opposite,_ he finishes. _He’s_ the secret hidden away in Wakanda now.

He’s never been more indebted.

Bucky watches the princess through the stream of Wakandan cryptograms. Thinks of her excitement for the Wakandan Outreach Program she likes to talk about. “The world’s a better place for it.”

She frowns instantly. “You shouldn’t say that about yourself. That’s what we’re trying to fix, eh.”

He hadn’t been referring to himself. The princess was the most intelligent person Bucky had ever known, but he was finding she could be remarkably oblivious about her own brilliance, kindness, potential.

“I meant you,” Bucky says, but she doesn’t hear him because she’s gasped and leapt up from her stool.

The princess stares at the holographic screen, down to her calculations, back up at him.

“I’ve got it!”


	4. howling commandos

She tells T’Challa she needs to come along to monitor for any signs of the Winter Soldier. Her brother nods. So does Steve Rogers. They don’t even think to question her (…well, maybe T’Challa side-eyes her with a little suspicion).

In fact, Shuri doesn’t need to come along at all. Bucky is totally fine.

She really just _wants_ to go.

For one, she can’t get enough of Fugitive Captain America (she could stare at that beard all day). But the main reason – the real reason – is that Shuri would like to see his reunion with Bucky.

She’s read the files, she knows Bucky’s whole history – his childhood in Brooklyn, the second world war, Hydra – but she still hasn’t seen him talk to his best friend.

It’s been six months since she woke him up. Six months he’s lived with her people. And the occasions Shuri has visited, he’s been polite and soft-spoken, but different to how she imagines he used to be. Like the old photographs and grainy footage hint at. She hopes she might see some of it today.

The Royal Talon lands in the nearest clearing, and accompanied by Okoye they pick their way through the trees until they reach the crest of the hill. At its base is his simple wooden house. The dull thud of steel on wood carries up towards them, and Shuri can see Bucky at the edge of the trees, chopping logs of timber. The axe head glints in the sunlight as he swings it in high arcs.

Shuri also hears laughing, and she spies three familiar children from the village swinging from a tree, watching Bucky work. They are talking in Xhosa, and she briefly wonders how much Bucky now understands. He was good with languages, she knows.

When the children notice their king they jump down from the branches and start running up the hill. Bucky looks up through strands of hair that have escaped a messy braid (Shuri doesn’t need to wonder who did that for him) and his gaze snags on the three of them.

Shuri and T’Challa let Rogers continue down alone, and his descent seems buoyed by eagerness. Bucky, too, is lodging the axe into a piece of timber and making his way over to meet him.

The children are up the hill in an instant, and Thabo tackles Shuri’s midsection with brute force. She stumbles around laughing with him, but she doesn’t take her eyes off Bucky and Rogers as they embrace, then throw an arm around each other’s shoulders as they laugh as well.

Shuri realises she’s grinning. A moment later, she notices T’Challa watching her with a knowing smile. She looks up at him. “What?”

“Nothing,” he turns his smile towards the soldiers.

Shuri knows she’s been figured out, but she doesn’t care. She can hear Bucky talking, and his voice is the same voice, but flooded with new colour, new timbres. His body language is looser than she’s ever observed, and Shuri is surprised when he socks Steve in the shoulder at a quip. He’s never made a movement against anyone while in Wakanda – not even a playful one. This is the James Buchanan Barnes Shuri has wanted to know.

“Well done,” T’Challa says to her.

Shuri looks between her brother and the Howling Commandos. It hits her fully, then. What she’s done for them. For Bucky. And momentarily, she’s taken aback.

Shuri has helped a lot of people with her intellect, but she doesn’t think she’s ever accomplished something that’s meant so much to someone.

She tries to shake off this strange, unexpected feeling as Rogers waves at them. Tries to distract herself by carrying Thabo on her back, all the way down the hill. But then Bucky is smiling right at her, and it’s blinding, blindingly obvious that she’s never accomplished something that’s meant so much to _her_.

It stops Shuri in her tracks.


	5. wakandan sunsets

At first, bathing every day had felt excessive. He knew he used to, before the war. But the Winter Soldier definitely hadn’t, and neither had the fugitive.

Now, he considers it a routine task. And he enjoys it.

For one; while his body has adjusted to the Wakandan heat and no longer sweats constantly, it’s still hot. And the water is cool.

Two; it’s late afternoon and the mothers have called their children home, so Bucky is alone. Not that he minds their company – they’re diverting, and amusing, and so comfortable around him it makes his heart ache. But he still likes the quiet.

The riverbank down from his house is grassy. After undressing among the tall reeds he wades out into the river, deep enough for discretion. Most days he just washes off, methodical and efficient, but sometimes he takes a little longer. Sometimes, he’ll float in the water. Like today.

He only closes his eyes for a minute. The current is gentle, and he drifts there, thinking of nothing but the sun, and the fields, and Summer. Of two clever hands, a dazzling smile. He can smell the orange and cinnamon, too. Almost taste its warmth–

Bucky seizes his thoughts, strangles them. _What is wrong with him?_

He opens his eyes and stands, his feet sliding into soft silt.

“Shit,” he murmurs as he looks around. The banks along the river are different. Drier, more open. Closer to the village. He’s drifted, in his distraction, perhaps half a mile –

“Bucky?”

He plunges down lower, though everything’s already hidden, and spins towards the noise. It’s been decades since he’s been caught by surprise.

“Princess,” Bucky manages.

Princess Shuri is standing frozen on the riverbank, gaping at him. The sun is behind her, defining her in gold, illuminating the sheer jacket she wears until it glows. Her braids are down.

For a long moment they stare at each other, unblinking.

“Are you…” the princess begins, but doesn’t finish what she’s thinking – if she’s thinking anything at all. It’s the first time Bucky’s ever seen her speechless. She was clearly not expecting to find him bathing half a mile out of the village.

“The current,” Bucky thinks to say lamely. “It drew me down…”

_What the fuck was he going to do?_ He couldn’t very well swim back upriver. He definitely couldn’t get _out_.

Princess Shuri seems to realise this as well.

“Hold on,” she says, and disappears behind another clump of reeds, but not before Bucky thinks he catches a glimpse of curving lips. Was she laughing at him?

He stands in the water until the princess reappears, a bundle of clothing in her arms. Silently, she places it on the grass beside the river and turns away.

Bucky wades out of the water, acutely aware of his nakedness, of her nearness, of the inappropriateness of this whole situation. What was she doing out here?

The princess waits with her back turned until he is dressed in the woollen robe – the ones they keep in the closets on their jets.

“Thank you,” he murmurs, for he can’t think of anything else to say.

There is a poorly restrained hint of a smile when she faces him again. “You should be more careful – the waterfall is just around that bend, and you only have one arm.”

Bucky was never someone who embarrassed easily. In fact, he takes a step closer to her. “I should’ve been paying attention.”

Princess Shuri is more herself again, now that they’re both on an even playing field. She grins. “Yes, you should have, because I don’t fancy fishing you out of the ravine, eh. You might lose your other arm.”

Bucky smiles. “I’m sure that would give you something to work on.”

She chuckles.

“What are you doing here,” he asks her, spotting her jet across the clearing.

The princess eyes him for a moment, perhaps debating what to say. Then she turns away from the water and points. “You see those trees?”

Bucky follows her direction. Two great trees stand alone in the nearby field, and strung up between them is a large, round mosaic of coloured crystal – an African sun mandala. He’s never seen it before.

“When I was little, my Baba and I made that. He said that for one week a year the sun sets directly between those two trees, and would light up the picture for me.”

Her voice has grown softer.

“And does it?” Bucky asks.

She looks at him. Smiles.

“Yes. And it’s beautiful.”

Bucky marks the sun, a minute or two above the pane of crystal. He’s seen a hundred Wakandan sunsets – he wants to see this one the most.

Princess Shuri reads his thoughts, perceptive as always.

“I’ll give you a ride home,” she grins at him, starting toward the field. “But you’ll have to wait for me first.”


	6. lab accident

He’s gone a year with just one arm, but Bucky chooses to blame their collision on his balance. “It’s still not great.”

Shuri would have called him out for lying, if she wasn’t so disconcerted. His arm secures her waist, steadying her.

She tries to piece together what just happened: _He sat up. She stepped back. He slipped off the medical cot. She tripped over his leg. He caught her before she ate Vibranium._

Her lab is quiet. Work has paused and all her scientists are watching them, so Shuri disentangles herself and plays along. “I don’t expect it to be.”

Later, she walks him back to the jet. She still hasn’t shaken the feeling of his fingers pressed into her back.

“Don’t stand near any cliff edges,” she says, by way of farewell.


End file.
